Concepts & Strategic Explorations

In the research activity Concepts & Strategic Explorations the target is to explore new promising concepts for wind turbine systems. The specific target of this activity is threefold. It consists of:

• identification of new promising concepts for wind energy systems and bringing these new concepts to the market for further development,
• identification of new R&D needs in present and future markets and
• initialisation of new Wind R&D topics

ECN Wind Energy has been involved for many years in the development and research on new and innovative wind turbine concepts. These activities have been and will be carried out in close cooperation with national and international industry and R&D institutes.
To carry out this research in an structured way the following staged working method is adopted:

1. The cost breakdown of a state of the art designs at different installed power ratings. 
2. Conceptual studies aiming at concepts that in offshore conditions will result in a lower cost of energy than the state of the art designs. 
3. Special design solutions that could, in the long term, lead to improved turbine control, load reduction and/or reduction in investment or operation and maintenance costs.

From the cost breakdown of exciting and new wind turbine concepts, the R&D needs for the further development of cost effective wind turbines for the present and future markets can identified.  Areas for possible improvement can be identified on basis of their contribution to the cost of energy and on basis of the design uncertainties related to the respective concepts.

Based on these R&D needs and on the availability of the required expertise and infrastructure new R&D topics will be initiated at ECN.

The research on concepts and strategic explorations is part of the UpWind Work Packages Integrated Design and Up-scaling and of the INNWIND consortium activities. Within this research the up-scaling of an existing design of a 5 MW turbine to 10, 15 and 20 MW is investigated. The economics play an important role in the feasibility of the up-scaled turbines. Therefore new cost models will be developed and the turbine concepts will be described in a yearly updated UpWind report “the Lighthouse” Each year improved cost models will become available and a new version of “the Lighthouse” will be prepared.